Can Such Things Be? eBook

“Yes, the right kind of eyes, conveying sensations
to the wrong kind of brain,” said Dr. Frayley,
smiling.

“Thank you; one likes to have an expectation
gratified; that is about the reply that I supposed
you would have the civility to make.”

“Pardon me. But you say that you know.
That is a good deal to say, don’t you think?
Perhaps you will not mind the trouble of saying how
you learned.”

“You will call it an hallucination,” Hawver
said, “but that does not matter.”
And he told the story.

“Last summer I went, as you know, to pass the
hot weather term in the town of Meridian. The
relative at whose house I had intended to stay was
ill, so I sought other quarters. After some difficulty
I succeeded in renting a vacant dwelling that had
been occupied by an eccentric doctor of the name of
Mannering, who had gone away years before, no one
knew where, not even his agent. He had built
the house himself and had lived in it with an old
servant for about ten years. His practice, never
very extensive, had after a few years been given up
entirely. Not only so, but he had withdrawn himself
almost altogether from social life and become a recluse.
I was told by the village doctor, about the only
person with whom he held any relations, that during
his retirement he had devoted himself to a single
line of study, the result of which he had expounded
in a book that did not commend itself to the approval
of his professional brethren, who, indeed, considered
him not entirely sane. I have not seen the book
and cannot now recall the title of it, but I am told
that it expounded a rather startling theory.
He held that it was possible in the case of many a
person in good health to forecast his death with precision,
several months in advance of the event. The
limit, I think, was eighteen months. There were
local tales of his having exerted his powers of prognosis,
or perhaps you would say diagnosis; and it was said
that in every instance the person whose friends he
had warned had died suddenly at the appointed time,
and from no assignable cause. All this, however,
has nothing to do with what I have to tell; I thought
it might amuse a physician.

“The house was furnished, just as he had lived
in it. It was a rather gloomy dwelling for one
who was neither a recluse nor a student, and I think
it gave something of its character to me—­
perhaps some of its former occupant’s character;
for always I felt in it a certain melancholy that
was not in my natural disposition, nor, I think, due
to loneliness. I had no servants that slept in
the house, but I have always been, as you know, rather
fond of my own society, being much addicted to reading,
though little to study. Whatever was the cause,
the effect was dejection and a sense of impending
evil; this was especially so in Dr. Mannering’s
study, although that room was the lightest and most
airy in the house. The doctor’s life-size
portrait in oil hung in that room, and seemed completely
to dominate it. There was nothing unusual in
the picture; the man was evidently rather good looking,
about fifty years old, with iron-gray hair, a smooth-shaven
face and dark, serious eyes. Something in the
picture always drew and held my attention. The
man’s appearance became familiar to me, and rather
‘haunted’ me.